


the innermost life of my life

by pinkmoon



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Children, First Meetings, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, and by children I really mean teens?, references to the death of Frodo's parents but nothing explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26056477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkmoon/pseuds/pinkmoon
Summary: “Have you been sent here to keep me company?”Sam leapt back from the garden shed, nearly losing his footing in the slippery mulch as he spun around. Standing before him was a boy. He seemed naught much older than Sam, though Sam supposed that might be because his expression was so stern, and that reminded him of being in trouble with his elders.“You look about my age,” the strange boy continued, appraising Sam from afar. Sam suddenly felt very aware - and subsequently very embarrassed - of his borrowed and oversized clothes. He’d thought it might make him look more the smartly-employed adult to borrow his Gaffer’s old canvas jacket and straw hat. He’d felt empowered, mature, setting out for his first unsupervised day working at Bag End that brisk morning. Now it all felt quite foolish under this stranger’s critical eye.“Are you meant to be acompanionfor me, to help with my moods?”-Or, Sam meets Frodo for the first time.
Relationships: Bilbo & Frodo offscreen, Frodo Baggins & Sam Gamgee, Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee
Comments: 7
Kudos: 49





	the innermost life of my life

“Have you been sent here to keep me company?”

Sam leapt back from the garden shed, nearly losing his footing in the slippery mulch as he spun around. Standing before him was a boy. He seemed naught much older than Sam, though Sam supposed that might be because his expression was so stern, and that reminded him of being in trouble with his elders.

“Pardon?” Sam squeaked. He had not meant to squeak so. He hadn’t time to get his voice right.

“You look about my age,” the strange boy continued, appraising Sam from afar. Sam suddenly felt very aware - and subsequently very embarrassed - of his borrowed and oversized clothes. He’d thought it might make him look more the smartly-employed adult to borrow his Gaffer’s old canvas jacket and straw hat. He’d felt empowered, mature, setting out for his first unsupervised day working at Bag End that brisk morning. Now it all felt quite foolish under this stranger’s critical eye.

“Are you meant to be a _companion_ for me, to help with my moods?” 

Sam realized he should answer.

“I work here?” Sam managed, timidly.

The boy’s eyes narrowed. He seemed extremely alert and sure-footed, which Sam thought was at odds with his complexion. Surely the last time he’d seen someone so pale was when his neighbors had fallen ill and hadn’t been able to leave their beds for quite some time. Sam daily walked over hearty meals his sisters prepared for them, then sat and helped to feed them. They bemoaned only being able to see the good weather from their windows, aching to set foot in some sunshine. Sam had felt very sad for them. But Sam often felt very sad about any number of unjust things which he could not fix, to his Gaffer’s pragmatic dismay.

“I’ve seen the man who tends these grounds,” the stranger replied sharply. “It’s not you.”

“That’s my old Gaffer,” Sam answered.

“Yours,” the boy mused. “So you’re his son -- or something like that.”

“Aye,” Sam replied. “And I’ve been apprenticing, though his knee is not right today so I am meant to work alone today.”

His hands crossed over his chest, and Sam noticed the edges of his palms were stained dark as if scorched black. His shirt, cornflower blue, was embellished with a fine silver brocade on either side of the button fastenings. It was a well-made shirt for well-off folk. Not so unlike Bilbo’s fine jackets and dressing gowns.

“You look a bit guilty,” the boy observed.

“Only because you frightened me, and twitchiness has a way of lookin’ guilty, I suppose.”

The boy considered this, his mouth twisting up briefly into a sly smile before it was smoothed back to impassivity.

“Very well,” he said, and rolled his shoulders back, quite a lot like Bilbo did before a decisive hit off his long pipe. “I believe you.”

“And I’m glad for that,” said Sam. “I couldn’t imagine being fired before I’d even started.”

And at that the boy laughed, and Sam felt an electric sense of accomplishment, a tender moment of real connection that nourished him like a good soup, it felt so warm and hearty. The boy calmed, then entreated,

“Tell me your name.”

Sam answered, “Samwise.”

“Samwise,” he repeated thoughtfully. And then said, “thank you,” and turned to go.

“Wait,” Sam called out after him, not thinking of how it might seem to be demanding anything from someone of much higher status. It was one of his worst qualities, Sam knew it and had been told so often. His impulsive need to know people, along with his heart too easily turned to pity, and a brain wired for gullibility.

The boy turned back, and mercifully seemed unperturbed. 

“Begging your pardon,” Sam deflected. “I just don’t know your name, and I’ve told you mine.”

“It’s Frodo,” he answered. “Of Bag End.”

Sam recalled his siblings gossiping about a young hobbit who’d come from Buckland as an orphan. I heard his parents were swallowed whole by some great monstrous thing in a river, one said. Not so, answered another, it was a whirlpool what swallowed them -- sucked their boat down like _that._ That isn’t it, someone else corrected. It was just a silly mistake that capsized them and they sunk and drowned, could happen the same to any one of us.

The gossip had not mentioned their son, beyond that he existed, and that he had come to live with Bilbo for reasons unknown to anyone. Some speculated it was meant to spite those who’d hoped to inherit Bag End, since Bilbo had no heir. Sam privately thought there were simpler reasons to want to take in a poor someone without a family, though he did not say so out loud, as that was another way he suspected his heart was too soft to understand things properly.

“Aye, I’m so sorry,” Sam gasped, and snatched off his hat to bow his head properly. “I am ashamed I didn’t recognize you.”

“How would you recognize someone you’d never met?”

Sam kept his head bowed and answered, “I dunno, but I’m sure there must be some proper way.”

“I don’t mind that you don’t know me,” Frodo said, rocking back on his heels. “I’ve heard people say they don’t even believe I’m real, and Bilbo has concocted a great lie about the heir to Bag End.”

Sam lifted his gaze and for the first time, Frodo looked his age. Young, mischievous, with a crackle of light behind his eyes.

“Would you have believed all that? If you hadn’t seen me?”

“I don’t know,” Sam replied. “It’s been said I’ll believe anything told to me.”

“Who says that?”

“Oh, anyone. Everyone.”

Frodo strode closer, close enough that Sam could see that Frodo was very clean for a hobbit, and the dark marks on his hands were not soot but stains of ink, and his eyes were a sort of blue that he had not before seen in nature. Sam’s tongue felt very heavy in his mouth, and his heart raced like he was in trouble, though there seemed to be no trouble in sight.

“Bilbo thinks I need friends. He thinks I mope about.”

Sam nodded sharply. “I might too, in your position.”

Frodo’s expression shifted so suddenly it made Sam a bit queasy. Surprise flashed across his face first, which twisted into pain - quick, but plain as anything. The hurt then flattened into a cold, practiced impassivity.

Sam knew he had said something stupid. He had said many stupid things before, but perhaps none he regretted quite so instantaneously. 

“I only mean - ” Sam began, but Frodo interrupted, 

“You’ve heard rumors.” He scoffed. “Who hasn’t.”

It wasn’t right to lie to him, Sam thought. And even if he were the lying sort, Frodo seemed smart enough to sniff it out, so Sam inhaled and began,

“I have. I’m sorry. Maybe it ain’t so where you came from, but things are quiet here, so anything new becomes everyone’s business right quick.”

Frodo seemed assuaged by this. Or, at the very least, he didn’t turn and run as Sam feared he might. Frodo sighed, pinning his gaze high at the tree line above Sam’s head. There was something mesmerizing about the lightness of his eyes - something translucent, something fragile - but Sam folded those thoughts away quickly.

“Isn’t anyone ever sad here?” Frodo laughed, but no humor softened his expression. It wasn’t self-pity, Sam thought. It was a genuine call for camaraderie.

“I am,” Sam answered instantly. “I feel sad about such small things, you’d think me a fool.”

“Truthfully?”

“Only truth, Master Frodo. When animals are injured, or when good food goes spoiled unexpectedly…”

Sam had a heart too easily turned to pity. So he’d been told, and knew it was true. But he did not pity Frodo and his turbulent grief. Instead, he felt that deep sadness keenly, and it did not fill him with unease. He felt he had room to house it. He felt Frodo might see Sam more clearly too, because of it.

Frodo looked him in his eyes again. _Frodo is so easy to look at,_ Sam realized suddenly, and did not feel shame for thinking it.

“You swear to me that Bilbo hasn’t paid you to come and lure me out of the house?” Frodo challenged, but there was no unpleasantness behind the accusation any longer. He had softened. Everywhere. His shoulders had rounded and his hands hung loose and long at his sides, like the young hobbit that he was.

“I swear it,” said Sam. “I am your gardener.”

Frodo nodded, and seemed to turn a thought over in his mouth and on his tongue for quite some time before he proffered,

“And you can be my friend, as well.”

Sam smiled at the ground, willing a flush away from his face. He pulled the hat back over his ears to disguise it.

“Aye,” Sam answered, “I can.”

**Author's Note:**

> "In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life."  
> \- Great Expectations


End file.
